


Senseless

by So_Caffeinated (so_caffeinated)



Series: Crazyness in Crazy Town (cross-fandom prompts) [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter RPG
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Horror, Torture, meme challenge, prompt: horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-19
Updated: 2013-05-19
Packaged: 2017-12-12 06:49:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/808550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/so_caffeinated/pseuds/So_Caffeinated
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Meme Challenge<br/>Prompt: Horror<br/>Character: Stella Gardner (Harry Potter RPG original character)</p>
    </blockquote>





	Senseless

**Author's Note:**

> Meme Challenge  
> Prompt: Horror  
> Character: Stella Gardner (Harry Potter RPG original character)

  
It smelled like dusk in autumn, like bonfire smoke and childhood and the rich scent of early dew collecting heavily on fall crops, already weighed down with the fruits of their season. The aroma burned at her throat in the short lunges of breath she managed to gasp, the earthy notes twisting the air into something eerily recognizable.  
  
It would strike her as funny, if she were still capable of having such thoughts, that it was her sense of smell that was the most overwhelming now. It hadn’t been like this at the beginning. When that first _Crucio_ slipped past Bellatrix’s lips like a delighted whisper of twisted ecstasy, Stella hadn’t smelled anything at all. It had been all pain, like acid poured on raw skin burning her from the inside out. The very air itself chafed against her body like sandpaper, the stone flooring cutting at her back like shards of glass as her farce of a cousin-in-law lorded over her, manipulating each nerve ending with the hand of a masterful artist at work, each arc of her wand, each letter intoned with precision and care for her craft.  
  
Sound had piqued soon after Stella had grown accustomed to the pain, her own voice surging in agony, sounding primal and foreign to her ears. Bellatrix’s words dulled to an indistinct hum in the background, white noise, their meaning lost even as the older woman droned on with questions she no longer expected an answer to. But then, it all faded further into the distance as the throbbing whorl of blood echoed in her ears.  
  
It had been taste that came next, the sick coppery flavour of her blood flooding her senses as she bit through her own tongue in an effort not to scream. Bile, acrid and sour seared against her raw throat - was she still screaming? – choking her off with something that tasted a lot like death. And so she was almost grateful when her vision went white, an imprint of the overhead lighting behind her eyelids forming a colour-changing dot that bled like spilled ink to overwhelm the blank canvass.  
  
It was only scent then. And whatever part of her mind remained clung to that sense, knowing somehow that if she lost that last tenuous grip, she would never regain a handhold.  
  
It should have smelled of turpentine and oils, or at the very least of blood and sick, but it didn’t. It smelled of home in October, of campfires with her dad and fall harvest with her mum and stargazing with her sisters. She might have laughed then, an aimless, mindless sound born of irreverent humour and hysteria, but she would not have known it if she did. She could neither feel the shake of her own shoulders nor hear the mad rumble of laughter bubble past her lips. Instead she clung (and clung and clung) to that smell even as it choked her. Memories lost coherence, imprints of moments only flittering past her mind’s eye in a slideshow of unrelated events strung together in senseless fashion.  
  
She forgot then what had happened and when, who these people were that watched the stars or toasted a marshmallow beside her; Indeed she forgot even who _she_ was, but she held on anyhow. And it was only when the smell changed, when her nostrils no longer burned with smoke and earth but instead with antiseptic and fresh linens that she let herself _let go_ and drift into unconsciousness.

 


End file.
